In all seriousness though, the Picasso museum, which I was led to believe would totally blow, was actually pretty great. There was a comprehensive exhibit of Lee Miller's personal and professional photography of Picasso. And while, by the end of it you sort of feel a little weird to be participating in such over the top idolization of this guy, even considering he was a brilliant artist, the photography was still surreal and captivating and honestly just as if not more engrossing than the subject. Or at least that's how I justified it in my head. It was free, so whatever.
I'm not really into museums. Especially art museums... I could use this opportunity to get on a soap-box about all the fucked up issues I have with high art, but I don't think I'd be saying anything that anyone hasn't said before. So for the sake of efficiency... I'll move on. (fuck an art museum, though)
To make matters worse (or better?) we ran into the crazy Canadians from the night before at the Picasso thing. They were being dicks though. By which I mean they were acting awkward and almost ashamed to see us. So we didn't really strike up too much conversation. What the fuck, though. It's not like we slept together... maybe they were just embarrassed they spent 14 euro on a shitty Spanish club. Well, kudos to them either way.
This post definitely just dove head first into one of those "I spoke to *insert person's name you've never heard of* yesterday. They said *insert inane inside joke* and we laughed till we crapped. Then I bought some ice cream and totally pigged out while watching *some stupid movie you don't care about*" so I'm going get to the point (I did buy some ice cream though... tiramisu.. it was delicious).
Map of Africa-Map of Africa
The name Map of Africa has been surfacing on random blogs for awhile now. But it's mostly been passing references or a brief raving on the excellent single "Bone" from this, their self-titled debut. That, more than likely, is symptomatic of the method in which Harvey Basset (a.k.a DJ Harvey) and Thom Bullock of Rub N Tug plan to promote this project. No one has quite called it a side-project, but it has all the familiar trappings of a side-project. It's also being released on Whatever We Want, a small brooklyn based label designed for "forward-thinking artists pushing their craft", whatever that means. From what I gather it means a limited pressing.
The album itself is more often than not a hip-shaking, fuck all, throwback rock record with all the sweaty charm of a Cymande song and a conversion van with a waterbed built in. That might sound gimmicky, and there are a few missteps that could potentially help you argue it as novelty. But the large majority of this album works. This is in no small part due to how much fun these dudes are having on tape. It's infectious. And almost makes me think the whole "ironic porn-stache" thing might actually be kind of cool... Not really though.
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